Engineering Commons^™

Additively-Manufactured Hybrid Rocket Consumable Structure For Cubesat Propulsion, Britany L. Chamberlain

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Three-dimensional, additive printing has emerged as an exciting new technology for the design and manufacture of small spacecraft systems. Using 3-D printed thermoplastic materials, hybrid rocket fuel grains can be printed with nearly any cross-sectional shape, and embedded cavities are easily achieved. Applying this technology to print fuel materials directly into a CubeSat frame results in an efficient, cost-effective alternative to existing CubeSat propulsion systems. Different 3-D printed materials and geometries were evaluated for their performance as propellants and as structural elements. Prototype "thrust columns" with embedded fuel ports were printed from a combination of acrylonitrile utadiene styrene (ABS) and …

Software Defined Radio System For Cubesat Communication, Tyler Gardner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Cube satellites, or CubeSats, are small satellites designed around a base unit cube of 10 cm by 10 cm by 10 cm which is commonly referred to as a one unit, or 1 U, CubeSat. The modular architecture of CubeSats allows multiple 1 U frames to be stacked together to form a larger (1.5U, 2U, usually up to 6U) frame as needed. Because CubeSats are cheaper to develop and deploy in orbit than larger satellites, they have become increasingly common for academic, amateur, commercial, and scientific applications over the past five to ten years. There is potential that CubeSats will …

Software Defined Radio For Cubesat Communication, Sarah Watkins

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Cube satellites, more commonly referred to as CubeSats, are small satellites that have become increasingly popular for academic, amateur, commercial, and scientific applications over the past five to ten years. These satellites provide a fairly inexpensive and compact platform for deploying many different types of equipment. While CubeSats do not allow for housing large, complex instruments, some organizations have begun to explore the possibility of deploying networks, or clusters, of CubeSats. Satellites in these clusters could theoretically be tied together via radio frequency communications to accomplish more than a single CubeSat could alone.

This report summarizes the preliminary design and …